It’s been a while since we’ve seen that smile. (Image: Courtesy of the city)

“If you hear anyone—I won’t say who—say we’re broke, it’s incorrect.”

—Toronto city manager Joe Pennachetti, speaking to students and professionals at a talk sponsored by York University’s law and business schools on Friday. The quote is remarkable because Pennachetti, the city’s most senior bureaucrat, has spent the past three and a half years carefully cultivating an air of neutrality around Rob Ford’s political agenda. For him to suggest—even obliquely—that the mayor’s talking points are nonsense would have been unthinkable a few months ago. The statement may mean that Ford’s post-crack-scandal influence over city staff is even weaker than we thought.